The Athens Post

MORE OF THE MISSOURI FREESOILERS.

A correspondent of the New York Tribune, goes into ecstasies over the freesoil recruits that are pouring into that State. Of the character of those recruits, we subjoin a brief extract from the letter

"The German element in the population of Missouri is becoming now a most important one in determining the destinies of the State. The German shopkeeper, mechanic and merchant are crowding one portion of St. Louis, and already form a population of nearly 75,000. The German peasant and vine-dresser, and farmer are settling all over the hillsides and the beautiful valleys of the interior, which the American pioneer had neglected for the rich river bottoms. Villages spring up where one hears no language, day after day, but the language of the old Fatherland. German Judges of the Peace are appointed in some of the counties; newspapers are published, laws printed, notices posted, school books issued—all in this foreign tongue.— The best agriculture of the country is falling into the hands of this busy, thorough people. Slavery melts away before the free Teutonic industry. The slaveholders find themselves competed with on the market, undersold and far outstripped in the yield of the arable lands. They sell their worn-out fields to these intrusive foreigners, and emigrate with their negroes, in disgust, to Texas. Besides, as a German well explained to me, the slave is becoming too expensive an instrument for labor. A healthy negro man costs now in Missouri some $1,200. Capital is worth here at least 10 per cent, so that his cost to the owner, without reckoning expenses of food, clothing, medicine, and shelter is $120 per annum. Then there must be added to this the cost of his absent or sick days, his "sulkiness" (which is, you know, a disease in the medical books,) his tendency to the "drapetomania" (to run away,) and his general disposition to skirk or do badly, work in which he has no interest. Now, against all these expenses and annoyances, the sum of $100 will procure the services for the year to the new settler of a free, intelligent, efficient, careful German laborer, who takes care of himself, and has no sulks. Is it any wonder, with this statement alone, that the new comers, whether American or German, detest Slavery, and that the old slave-owners are glad to get rid of their expensive laborers, and either turn Free-Soilers or emigrate to more congenial circumstances?"

It is not much wonder that the St. Louis Democrat, should, in view of these facts, announce that freesoilism has already triumphed in Missouri. It says that the battle is already fought and won, and that the great hope of the abolitionists is being realized without resort to Legislation, and takes to itself and its friends enthusiastic congratulations on the fact.